Thy Kingdom Come? The Lord's Prayer and Christian Nationalism

 

A number of years ago, I authored a book on the Lord's Prayer, a prayer many of us recite each Sunday in church. I titled the book Ultimate Allegiance: The Subversive Nature of the Lord's Prayer. By that, I meant the Lord's Prayer serves as a pledge of allegiance to the reign of God over the world. While I have a variety of allegiances, the most important is my allegiance to God and God's realm. That realm crosses every boundary, including national boundaries. When I wrote the book back in 2010, I never thought that the Lord's Prayer might become the mantra of anti-vaxxers hoping to undermine the nomination of the head of a state health department because he recommended vaccinations and encourage mask-wearing. Now, understand, this nominee was nominated by a very conservative Republican governor. The only problem is that he's not anti-vaxxer (he opposes mandates but not vaccines per se). 

Well, Beau Underwood and Brian Kaylor of Word and Way for their newsletter Public Witness wrote a piece they've titled Thy Kingdom Come? In this piece, they highlight this controversy and the role that the Lord's Prayer played in it. They wrote this:

It might be tempting to dismiss the use of the Lord’s Prayer during Monday’s anti-vax protest as an odd anomaly. But those sacred words actually keep popping up in political protests despite the fact that Jesus introduced the prayer by warning his followers not to pray like the hypocrites standing “on the street corners to be seen by others.”  

The day before the protest in Missouri, anti-vax protesters north of the U.S. border similarly chanted the Lord’s Prayer. The so-called “Freedom Convoy” saw truckers and other Canadians descend on their national capital of Ottawa over the weekend to protest a vaccine mandate. As the thousands of protesters gathered — some waving Nazi and Confederate flags alongside Canadian ones — activist Ginny Bruneau spoke to the crowd on Sunday. She talked about the importance of saying the Lord’s Prayer to urge “the living God to change this country in Jesus’s precious and holy name.” Many in the crowd shouted out the words as she led them. 

Nor did this start with the anti-vax movement. The Lord’s Prayer made multiple appearances in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. As we previously reported, Donald Trump’s spiritual advisor Paula White offered a prayer to start Trump’s rally that day in protest of the election results. 

With the White House behind her, she proclaimed that “God is going to be in today.” And she asked God to “turn the hearts of those who are in power and in position to make decisions to walk in your wisdom and to do justly today for the integrity of democracy” (though in hoping to overturn the results of a free and fair election, she fails to grasp what the “integrity of democracy” requires). Then she asked the crowd of future insurrectionists to join her in saying the Lord’s Prayer. But she added to the ending. 

“...For thine is the kingdom and the power,” White prayed, “and the glory forever, and we all said for this United States of America, amen, for as our president says, ‘we worship God, not government.’” 

In the context of the article, Beau and Brian invited a couple of people, including myself, who have written books about the Lord's Prayer to comment, which I did, along with Will Willimon and Obery Hendricks (pretty good company). In fact, Hendricks points out that it appears that people do not understand the nature of this prayer that is being weaponized by Christian nationalists, like the folks who gathered in the capital of Missouri. 

So, perhaps it's time to study this prayer more closely, so we might know what Jesus intended by it. Of course, I offer up my book: Ultimate Allegiance. But also read the article The Kingdom Come? by Beau and Brian to see what I had to say about the situation. It's very revealing as to what is going on in our country when it comes to religion and public life.